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Reading Lolita in Tehran
Teachers: If you’d like a printable version of this guide, download the PDF attachment at the bottom of this page.
Reading Lolita in Tehran chronicles the life of Azar Nafisi, a Professor of English, during her years in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The book offers great challenges to young readers, and promises to enlighten them in a myriad of ways. Nafisi’s experience in Iran will provide opportunities to discuss several key themes in class, such as: personal freedom, social obligations, tyranny and democracy, love and commitment, ethics and moral courage. Although few younger students will find themselves in as extreme a situation as those living in revolutionary Iran, many of their experiences can be explored through empathetic reflection.
Nafisi’s book is rich and flexible enough to be read at any number of levels, thus making it appropriate to high school, freshman, and upper-class college study. Moreover, because of its focus on personal narrative, literary analysis, and historical context, it has an interdisciplinary quality that will enhance any teaching focus one may apply. Since it is a “memoir in books”, one obvious way to teach it is to make explicit connections to the books Nafisi features; e.g.
The Great Gatsby or Pride and Prejudicecan be assigned along with the corresponding section of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Class discussion can then focus on: a. Nafisi’s interpretation of the novel(s), b. her students’ responses (often very critical or enthusiastic), c. the book’s many reflections on the function and value of literary study. In addition, the book’s engaging personal voice and perspective will make these important but distant historical events closer and more intelligible to most students, thereby providing opportunities to discuss world politics, religion, and human rights, as well as research and writing projects.
In what follows, various subheadings are employed to introduce teachers to the text, to offer a handy source of historical information, and to provide study questions and essay topics. The writing assignments ask the students to focus attention on specific issues that can be effectively handled in a limited number of pages, as well as in a range of forms including expository, personal, research, and literary analytical.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Azar Nafisi is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. She won a fellowship from Oxford and taught English literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai University in Iran. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil and left Iran for America in 1997. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New Republic, and is the author of Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
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